Press Kit: Discovering the Civil War

Discovering the Civil War

We Were There

Seamstresses protest an injustice. A group of seamstresses working at the U.S. Arsenal in Philadelphia wrote this letter to the Secretary of War in 1862 to most respectfully remonstrate about work that had been taken from them and given to a contractor. The contractor paid only about half what the women previously received. Since many of the women had husbands, fathers, and sons in the Army, their wages were their sole means of livelihood. National Archives, Records of the Office of the Quartermaster General